Newport village

It has been announced who is standing for election for Newport Parish Council. They are:

Ray Allard
Richard Bate
Adrian Batty (new)
John Etherington (new)
Roy Hunt (new but served until 2007)
Gordon Shields
Tony Walker
Sharon Watts (new)

Those current councillors who are standing down are:

Shirley Chapman
Dolly Johnson
Steve Collins
Stephanie Openshaw
Chris Burke
Rhonda Clarke

As there are only eight nominations for the eleven posts, all those nominated will be elected.

A very positive meeting where I believe a lot was learned and a lot shared.

Many thanks to the parish council for arranging the meeting and to Steve Collins for chairing the meeting - but where were the rest of the Parish Council - are they not interested in matters that concern villagers and the anglers who support the village financially?

There were a number of items discussed and I hope I can recall all of them as accurately as I can:

I had an update on this on Friday, and the current situation is that the case will be sent to appeal, probably next week.

I understand from different sources that there are objections to the creation of a Byway Open to All Traffic (BOAT).

One is for the creation of a Restricted BOAT, meaning that motorised traffic would not be allowed, except by or with the permission of the land owner.

The second is for the road to be put back on the list of streets so that it would be a road in the normal sense maintainable by ERYC.

I can see problems with all three solutions.

Unlike other users on this site, we only got our Council Tax bill yesterday.

I note with concern that we still have the highest precept of any village in East Yorkshire.

The excuse given by Gordon Shields is that the precept was too low in the past so has to be higher now.

But, the fact is that compared with other villages in the East Riding, our precept over previous years wasn't low, it was higher than average.

In May this year there is an election for all of the seats on our parish council.

Nomination papers are now available from the East Riding Electoral Services Department Tel 01482 393310 or from our parish clerk, Cara.

I am disappointed that the parish council themselves are not using this site to advertise the election and to encourage as many people as possible to stand for election. Perhaps they are content with their status quo and want to be left alone to carry on as before.

About 14 years ago I was elected to Newport Parish Council. Previous to me becoming a Councillor plans had been put in place to develop what was called the Brickyard Project. However, I soon discovered that there were fairly substantial concerns in the village that the location was inappropriate as a play/recreation area, that the facility would not be very well used and that there was a risk the whole area would become dilapidated through a mixture of vandalism and neglect.

OK, lets get a few things straight.

Today I visited the Brickyard for the fist time since about October last year and was surprised at just how badly the site has deteriorated.

I remember asking before what the budget was for maintenance and being told it was less than £1,000 (I can't recall the exact amount). Bear in mind that six years ago I was paying £2,500 per annum for help with our previous garden that is nowhere near as large or difficult to maintain as the Brickyard, so it is hardly surprising that the site has once again become a bit of an eyesore.

I believe that there are four things the PC has to consider:

It seems incongruous to me that this Blog, which is dominated by discussions related to Newport Parish Council, is administered by the Chair of the Council who, it would appear from previous blogs, is keen to have his own way both inside the Parish Council and outside of it.

So, Sharon finds an article that is possibly an embarassment to the Parish Council, but it gets blocked.

One of the critics of the Parish Council who, like me, was himself a Parish Councillor is allegedly blocked from having an account, so uses someone elses.

I was astounded to learn that NPC is considering putting fishing pegs on the Canal Side East side of the canal, it seems to create more income from fishers.

Well, let me explain why, when the fishing was organised by Hull and District Angling Club, they took the view that to allow fishing from Canal Side East would make no sense.